Behind the traditional red brick façade of the building in Hampstead, two entirely different environments had been created; both crossing the boundaries between art and design, one colourful, geometric, abstract and architectural, linking back to the Memphis collective of which Nathalie Du Pasquier was a member; the other thoughtful and philisophical by Christopher Nyampeta, creating a space for communities to come together, as Francis Kéré created at the Serpentine Gallery in summer 2017.
Both took over the galleries spaces, creating rooms within rooms. In ‘Other Rooms’, Du Pasquier left no wall untouched as she covered them in colourful architectural geometric shapes while also creating two internal square spaces which house mini exhibitions of smaller images, drawings and seven ceramic sculptures, one for each day of the week. Christian Nyampeta’s ‘Words after the World‘ was more subdued, more philosophical, with a circular meeting space showing a film of a fictional writer working in an almost impossible political regime where the use of existing words was restricted by copyright, and thus having to invent new words to be able to write and avoid persecution at the same time, while outside the circular space were quiet and communal areas for people to work and study and consider the problem of how communities and people could communicate knowledge if existing words were banned. A fascinating problem…….
[…] which continues in the paintings and installations of Nathalie du Pasquier recently on show at Camden Arts and PACE London. Nakai’s work is more natural and graphic in style, limited to a few colors […]